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to let well alone, adding innovation after innovation, perpetually trying to improve their handiwork. First there had been the stone tubs on the fore court, a constant temptation to vandals who got a more than commonly satisfying kick from ravishing these particular flowers. Then came the consignment of houseplants for the offices, tradescantia and sanseveria and ficus elastica that were doomed from the start to dehydration and ultimately to have their pots serve as repositories for cigarette ash.
       Last year it had been glass sculpture, a strange green tree, a very Yggdrasil, for Burden’s sanctum, and for Wexford an inky-blue, amorphous pillar that in some lights grossly resembled the human figure. These, too, had been fated, Wexford’s broken by a pretty young woman who was helping him with his enquiries and Burden’s one day inadvertently put out with the rubbish.
       That should have been the end of it. And then, just as the foyer was beginning to take on a shabby, comfortable look, the lift arrived, an elegant black and gilt box with a sliding door.
       ‘It isn’t working yet,’ Wexford said, a shade nervously.
       ‘That’s where you’re wrong. Been operating since this morning. Shall we try it?’
       ‘I should just like to know what’s wrong with the stairs,’ Wexford exploded. ‘It’s a downright disgrace wasting the ratepayers’ money like this.’ He stuck out his lower lip. ‘Besides, Crocker says walking upstairs is the best exercise in the world for me with my blood pressure.’
       ‘Just as you like,’ said Burden, turning his face away so that Wexford should not see him smile.
       By the time they reached the third floor they were both out of breath. The flimsy yellow chair behind Wexford’s rosewood desk creaked as he lowered his heavy body into it.
       ‘For God’s sake open a window, Mike.’
       Burden grumbled that opening windows upset the air conditioning but he complied, raising the yellow venetian blind and letting in a powerful shaft of noonday sunshine.
       ‘Well, sir,’ he said. ‘Shall we re-cap on what we know about Charlie Hatton?’
       ‘Thirty years old, born and bred in Kingsmarkham. Two years ago he got married to a Miss Lilian Bardsley, sister of the man he’s in business with. Bardsley’s got his own firm, transporting small electrical goods.’
       ‘Was Hatton a full partner?’
       ‘We’ll have to find out. Even if he was, I can’t see he could get that flush driving loads of irons and heaters up to Leeds and Scotland a couple of times a week. Carter says he had a hundred quid on him, Mike. Where did he get the money from?’
       ‘Maybe this McCloy.’
       ‘Do we know any McCloys?’
       ‘Not that I can recall, sir. We shall have to ask Maurice Cullam.’
       Wexford wiped his brow with his handkerchief and, following Camb’s example, began to fan himself with the morning paper. ‘The philoprogenitive Cullam,’ he said. ‘He had one of his quiverful with him when I found Hatton this morning. He’s a lorry driver too, Mike. I wonder. . . Hatton had his lorry hi-jacked twice this year.’
       Burden opened his pale-blue eyes. ‘Is that so?’
       ‘I remembered,’ said Wexford, ‘as soon as Cullam told me whose the body was. Both times were on the Great North Road and no one was ever done for it. Hatton got knocked on the head the first time but the second time he wasn’t hurt, only tied up.’
       ‘Once,’ said Burden thoughtfully, ‘is fair enough. Occupational hazard. Twice looks fishy. I want to hear what the doctor has to say. And if I’m not mistaken that’s him outside now.’

    Dr Crocker and Wexford had been at school together. Like Jack Pertwee and Charlie Hatton, they were lifelong friends, but their friendship was a casual business and their manner to each other, dry, irreverent, often caustic. Crocker, some six years the chief inspector’s junior, was the only man Burden